FA needs urgent change at the top after damning day

The Football Association’s senior management were facing calls for multiple resignations after a calamitous day for the people running the sport when their failings in the Mark Sampson affair were brutally exposed and the chief executive, Martin Glenn, was accused of behaviour “bordering on blackmail” by one of the England Women’s footballers whose complaints of racial remarks have finally been proven.

In a remarkable day of evidence before the digital, culture, http://www.officialfootballauthentics.com/dallas_cowboys-c-34_961.html sport and media committee, the FA issued a full apology to Eni Aluko and Drew Spence after a third inquiry, instigated on the back of the Guardian’s investigation into the previous two processes, concluded that Sampson, the now-deposed manager, had made discriminatory remarks to both players.

The report, drawn up by the barrister Katharine Newton, concluded there was now overwhelming evidence to find that Sampson had asked Spence, a mixed-race player, how many times she had been arrested and told Aluko to make sure her Nigerian relatives did not bring the Ebola virus to Wembley.

However, the reversal of Newton’s initial findings, amid allegations of an FA cover-up and whitewash, set the scene for an extraordinary hearing in which the organisation’s chairman, Greg Clarke, had to issue a hasty apology for describing claims of institutional racism as “fluff” and the England Women’s goalkeeping coach, Lee Kendall, was accused of regularly speaking to Aluko in a fake Caribbean accent.

The hearing also heard claims that a black actress was hired for a role-play about a selfish and badly behaved footballer in front of Aluko’s former team-mates, leaving them thinking it was a deliberate portrayal of her, and Glenn was forced to issue his own apology after being interrogated about his interview with the Guardian in which he stated Newton was appointed, as a black woman, because of her sex and ethnicity. Glenn said he had been tired “at the end of a long day”, adding that it was not “a pack of lies but it was an embellishment,” drawing accusations from the MPs that he had changed his story because his initial line was illegal in discrimination law.

Clarke later blamed the football-abuse inquiry, claiming he was tired after “working 22 hours a day”, when pressed http://www.sandiegochargersauthorizedstore.com/antonio-gates-jersey-elite on the story this newspaper revealed on Monday about his 14-word email response – “I’ve no idea why you are sending me this. Perhaps you could enlighten me” – to the Professional Footballers’ Association sending him a six-page document stating the Aaron Lynch Jersey FA’s internal review was a “sham” that was “not a genuine search for the truth.

That email, described by Aluko as “dismissive and disrespectful”, was the subject of intense questioning and one of the reasons why the committee chairman, Damian Collins, later called for the four FA executives who appeared in Aaron Lynch Jersey front of the MPs – Clarke, Glenn, the technical director, Dan Ashworth, and the human resources director, Rachel Brace – to resign.

“What’s really concerning is that the best practice that would be in a big company clearly wasn’t brought to bear in the FA,” Collins said. “Why is that? Are there people blocking it? The organisation doesn’t want to do it? There are serious failings there and I can’t believe any of the people on the panel could be proud of the process they ran.

“Does what you have seen today inspire confidence that they understand the issues well enough that they will put in place the right system to make sure it doesn’t happen again? I’m not convinced. You have to question whether they are the right people to take the organisation forward.”

Amid a number of highly damaging revelations, it also emerged that the FA had withheld half of an £80,000 out-of-court settlement it had reached with Aluko and, according to the player, invited her to a meeting last month at which Glenn tried to cut a deal that she either put out a statement saying the organisation was not institutionally racist or would not receive her money. “I felt that was bordering on blackmail,” Aluko said.

 

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